


my outsides are cool (my insides are blue)

by falsettodrop



Category: Figure Skating RPF, Olympics RPF
Genre: Body Image, Character Study, F/M, Non-Linear Narrative, Time Period: 2006 - 2009
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-27
Updated: 2018-12-27
Packaged: 2019-09-28 11:03:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,459
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17181749
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/falsettodrop/pseuds/falsettodrop
Summary: Things she is: a perfectionist. Things she is not: an Olympic gold medalist.





	my outsides are cool (my insides are blue)

**Author's Note:**

> So, a month and a half ago The Writers' Guild was talking about stuff they'd like to see in fic and I brought up body dysmorphia. This is the result - it's a somewhat adjacent concept to that. It's not my usual style, to be honest, and for that reason I'm sure a lot of people won't be into it, but eh. I tried something new, and I do these things because I like to challenge myself. It's probably the most cathartic thing I'll ever write and it's not going to be everyone's cup of tea, but here we go. Please feel free to let me know if you feel something from it.

Tessa makes a list.

(Tessa writes lists for a lot of things, actually. She isn’t entirely sure if she’s going to make it to Vancouver, stand atop that podium and tell the world to go fuck itself for putting her through hell, but there’s one thing that she knows she _can_ win a gold medal in, and that’s making lists. Forgive her for being the most mundane person; she’s quite aware of how lame that might sound.)

She makes a list when her personal therapist—Juliana—asks about what she’d do differently if she were to do it all over again. The surgery, both before and after. Tessa makes a list when she asks her why she loves figure skating. Tessa makes a list when she asks her why she believes she might be angry with Scott.

Juliana asks who Tessa thinks has negatively influenced her body image as well, but she needs a solid few hours to think about that one. It’s a question that’s so important that it hurts to discuss candidly. She’s able to discuss a lot of things, actually: her anger, her career, her surgeries, her romantic endeavors. But that, she knows, is not one of them.

“Would you like to talk about why Scott isn’t on here?” Juliana asks, after she’s deconstructed the reason behind every single name that she included on that piece of crisp, linen paper. ( _Marina and Igor_ , it says. _Her mother_. _Other female figure skaters. Her aunt, the one who always criticizes how she looks when she sees her at family gatherings. The gossip sites. Her ex-boyfriends._ )

Tessa swallows. She takes a few moments, and to anyone else it might look like she’s considering it, but the truth is that she already spent six hours thinking about this very question last night. “Everyone on that list has one thing in common,” she states, voice slow as molasses. “They have all, at one point, made a snide comment about my appearance.”

“Hm,” her therapist replies. It gives her nothing. Why is she paying this woman three hundred dollars an hour, again?

Tessa continues, unprompted. “But Scott has never had a single thing to say about my looks.”

Juliana’s hand twitches on the pen in her hands; it’s a reflex at this point, and Tessa braces for what is to come. “Never?” she asks, pushing for clarification. “Not even positively?”

Tessa bites her lip. _Well_ , she backtracks, _I suppose that’s untrue_. Yes, of course there have been moments where he might have said something, but they all blur together in her head. They do so many interviews together, and the interviews are literally called fluff pieces. How is she supposed to hold any value of truth to those things, when they don’t depict the underlying reality of anything? Scott makes so many jokes about wanting to hold a pretty girl’s hand, but that’s all constructed, planned, fairytale bullcrap. Tessa almost doesn’t feel like that girl is her, not really; in the stories that she and Scott share, the girl is someone she is not, someone she no longer is. Sometimes, when it’s late at night and she’s marvelling at where her life has taken her, she can’t help but wonder what that girl is up to. She thinks about it after she carefully checkmarks her list of daily routines, allowing the black night sky filled with hot-white stars to filter through her curtains, eat her room alive, and spit out a greyer version of herself.

The therapist clears her throat.

“Sorry,” Tessa mutters, shaking her head. “No. I mean, of course Scott has said good things.” _He’s Scott_ , she adds silently.

Juliana nods, deciding to write down in her notebook. “I want you to pay attention to the way you said that—as if, because the things he said were good, they don’t count. Why do you think you did that?”

Tessa sits in her lounge chair, picking at a hangnail. Her nail clipper is in her purse; she keeps it on her at all times in case she might need it. At times like these, she wishes she was a nail biter—but her strange need to have her nails cut, unpolished, and clean will always outweigh that miniscule flighting thought.

Juliana’s pen scratching over paper breaks through her absent mind, and she remembers the question.

In all honesty, Tessa isn’t sure about the answer to that.

 

 

Justin Timberlake’s latest album is blasting through the speakers at a Canton party, Tessa is wearing her newest pair hip huggers, and tequila is burning in her throat. Scott is in the corner, drunkenly making out with a girl that looks like an interesting concoction of what Jennifer Aniston might look like if she was the size of Meryl Davis. It’s 2006.

These are the things that Tessa notices about the girl:

She has blonde hair and a perfectly shaped button nose. She barely reaches Scott’s shoulders when she stands up straight in front of him, a full head and a half shorter than him. If he was lifting someone like her, he wouldn’t need to work out for four hours straight on gym days; instead, it would come perfectly naturally.

These are the things that Tessa notices about how _she_ looks tonight:

Her hair is dyed red and Scott had paused for exactly six seconds when he noticed, and then lied to her outright, telling her that he liked it. Her jeans show off the jut of her hip bone, the dimples in her back, and her rebellious belly button piercing, just like it does with all the celebrities in those fashion magazines. She thinks she’s supposed look sexy, but she’s mostly on another plane of self-conscious.

She digs her nail into her palm, and downs another shot of tequila. She’ll belong here for as long as she tells herself she does.

 

 

Tessa has a blinding urge to fix things.

Initially, it’s a quirk of hers that everyone around her seems to love, praising her for the independence. But it eventually morphs into an ugly quality; it becomes something that people are afraid to say to her, in fear that it might result in unpacking the layers to it that aren’t so lovely.

She fixes things, taking her time to figure out exactly how to fix them. She fixes her foot when she hurts it during ballet when she’s only nine years old, remembering the advice her grandmother gave her sister when she fell and sprained her ankle. She doesn’t tell a single soul, nursing herself to good health.

She fixes people too, because it’s easier to do that than attempting to fix herself. But the hard thing about that is, while it’s rewarding at first, being the kind of person that needs to be needed… it always turns out that people will no longer need her. And then she’s left with nothing.

(The saddest part is that she’s always aware that’d they’d no longer need her, by the end of it. There are always timers on those types of relationships, a stopwatch that is pressed as soon as she says _you can talk to me, I’m here for you_ , but she allows it to happen anyway. She allows them to take what they need from her and make a run for it, fixed and bright, while she remains shut tight, silent, and broken.)

Tessa fixes things. So she fixes her nose, too.

(She doesn’t tell a soul about that one, either.)

 

 

Tessa fucking hates dieting.

It’s absolutely ridiculous, that’s what it is. It’s inhumane, meticulously weighing portion sizes to certain meats and dishes like they’re animals. It’s borderline barbaric, having to do calorie count mental math and remember exactly how many hours in the gym cancel out the food she’s been assigned to consume.

She _needs_ food, as a to-be Olympian. Her entire career depends on her body, and her body depends on food. She doesn’t understand why people want to put limits on greatness. Food is to be eaten; it’s one of the few pleasures of life, when so many parts of it are complete and utter shit.

And so Tessa indulges. In secrecy, at first, but then because Scott knows her better than she knows herself, she ends up indulging with him too. He joins her when she goes on her sprees; in fact, he encourages her, telling her she deserves them and taking joy in the pleasure she receives when she intakes something he’s handed to her. He sneaks her treats between their bland lunches and takes her to dinners after they have successful practice sessions. He’s wonderful about it.

It’s a rebellion, a rush of adrenaline every time she fucks with her food diary and the notes of feedback that Marina has written, outlining all the problem areas on her body. Every single chocolate, every croissant. (Every chocolate _covered_ croissant, when she’s feeling particularly vengeful.) They’re devoured and enjoyed and she fucking loves food, she loves it so much.

Something that Tessa would like to state for the record is that she does not throw up after she indulges. She does not. She, very consciously, makes a decision every single time _not_ to throw up. See, if she threw up, it would be a problem, and she is not prepared to have one of those; her plate is much too heavy. (That’s figuratively, she adds wryly. Unfortunately, not literally.)

Instead, she works extra hard at the gym after she indulges. She spends longer on the ice, and Scott is all for it. It’s a fuck you and a loophole all in one; she gets to one-up her competition and experience the luxuries they can’t at the same time.

(Tessa loves to live in the grey areas of life. She discovers every shade with a spiking interest, momentarily brightening in bursts of colour from her brilliance in finding them, before inevitably fading to an ordinary mix of black and white once the fun is over.)

Tessa learns to love food and learns to hate it within the span of a decade, faster than some people can start to recognize the true beauty behind it. Food is the one to blame, she decides furiously, when her doctor informs her of the overuse injury.

Fuck food.

 

 

Scott is the first one to see her in the dress for their free program at Worlds. It’s 2008.

“Jesus Christ, Tess,” he breathes out, almost as if he’s in awe of her. “It… wow, you look…”

She laughs, soft and understanding. “You don’t need to flatter me,” she murmurs, moving closer to him to fix the collar of his shirt. She has such a good feeling about this one.

“I’m serious, Tessa.” His eyes in this moment are so lovely, and sometimes she thinks they’re similar to hers. The difference is that while her eyes are cool green, an intense shade darkening them, his are a warm brown, green flecks brightening them. “You’re beautiful.”

Her mouth twitches, corner turning upward at the comment. He must be full of it.

Why would you consider something beautiful after staring at it for hours, every day in your life? It’s bound to get boring after all that time, she thinks, and while people might say that time heals everything, the hidden truth is that it solely dulls it.

 

 

Scott notices the nose job immediately, because of course he does. It’s Scott’s job to take care of her, to notice her, to be aware of her at all times.

They’re meeting up for the first time in three weeks. She made sure of this—of the fact that she would get it done and then be able to wait three full weeks to recover from her rhinoplasty without anyone in the skating sphere noticing—because she knew he would get like this about it.

They’re the first ones to arrive for a team meeting to discuss the upcoming Olympic season. It’s a meeting with their gym specialists, dieticians, sports psychologists, coaches, the works. She made sure that she and Scott would be the first to arrive as well, because she knew he’d react explosively.

“What the _fuck_?” he keeps muttering under his breath, holding her chin in his hands as his eyes zero in on her face. He had pulled her into a bathroom as soon as he saw her, leaving their coats on the table of the meeting room. “ _What the fuck_?”

“Can you please relax?” she says to him, stiffly. She had prepared, in her head, fifty different scenarios for how she would explain this to him. This reaction was number thirty seven, if she remembers correctly.

“Tessa.” He utters her name as if he’s in pain; she can see the anguish in his eyes—but what the fuck is he even cut up about? _It’s my body_ , she’s prepared to fight. _It’s my face; I can do whatever I choose to it. I have rights. You have no business judging me. I did it for us; I did it so we can win the Olympics._

She waits, bubbling below her skin, ready to counteract.

He doesn’t say a thing, though. Instead, he looks at her, holding his breath like she’s about to crack in half and he’ll no longer have a partner, and gathers her in a hug. The hug is filled with warmth and home, and she unintentionally juxtaposes this moment with how she had felt on the surgical table, cold and foreign. She melts into it, bones dissolving until she’s no longer a person, until she doesn’t need to worry about things anymore.

When he pulls away, he pulls far enough that he can take a good look at her face. She can see him swallow, the apple of his throat bobbing, saying the unsaid. Scott inches in closer to her, so fucking close that she can’t breathe, and kisses her eyelids after seeing her lashes laced with light, wet, unshed tears. He kisses her nose too—three times, from the bridge to the tip, so careful like he’s afraid he might hurt her. He’s so gentle. A tear escapes the confines of her lid, and he brushes his thumb away at it, intertwining their fingers with his other hand.

They return to their table two minutes later, after they’re discussed absolutely everything with nothing but their eyes.

When Marina arrives to the meeting, it takes her approximately three minutes to notice Tessa and the change in her appearance. Tessa stands still—spine straightened and posture tight—and watches Scott watch Marina from the corner of her eye.

Marina nods once at her, approvingly. Tessa takes in the crushed expression painted on Scott’s face before she sits down, tensity penetrating every molecule of her body, and prepares herself to diligently take the meeting minutes.

 

 

“Do you realize you’re a perfectionist?” their marriage counsellor asks, but it sounds more like a statement. She says it as if it’s a bad thing, and Tessa despises it.

 _Scott is a perfectionist too_ , is what she does not reply. But she doesn’t say it because she’s aware that it’s different between them; the difference in their perfectionism is what cost them almost everything. Scott’s strive for excellence is what pushes him to be the greatest ice dancer of all time. Tessa’s strive for excellence hinders their careers beyond repair, stealing months of training and medals of the gold variety in the process.

It puts her through compartment syndrome. It puts her through a risk taking (and possibly a career-ending) surgery. It tests the nature of her partnership with Scott and plays cruelly with the trust and loyalty they’ve already established.

See, people seem to think Tessa is not aware of who she is. People seem to think she needs a therapist to figure it out. But Tessa knows herself. She’s painfully aware of every single flaw on her body, and she’s hyper aware of every single facet of her personality. She knows who she is.

Eventually, she replies, careful and acknowledging: “I don’t think anyone ever became an Olympic gold medalist without being a perfectionist.”

(Things she is: a perfectionist. Things she is not: an Olympic gold medalist.)

Tessa knows everything she is, and everything she’s not. She doesn’t need a licensed practitioner to tell her what that is.

 

 

Tessa aches after her surgery.

She aches in her legs, when the effects of her opiates fade away and she’s left with the tiresome stinging from her operation. She aches in her mind, visualizing all the gym and ice time that she’s missing out on, desperately wishing she could be there, working away at building herself back up again.

She aches in her heart, too. For a multitude of reasons that she does not feel like sharing. (If she shares them they might become real and she’s doing fine pretending they’re not, thanks.)

 

 

(The truth is she isn’t fine pretending they’re not real, she isn’t fine at all. She breaks down and builds herself up and breaks down again. She does it in private at first, but then she does it more publicly, in front of Scott. He holds her in his arms and tells her that things will be okay. She isn’t sure if they will be, but she tightens her grip on him and prays. Maybe she should start counting the things good things he says, after all.)

 

 

She can’t live in the grey, is something she discovers as well. She needs to relearn the colour-wheel that she was taught in grade school; she needs it in her life, and she needs to turn it into her spiritual guide. She simply cannot bask in shades of black and white anymore.

 

 

“Can you please stop reading that shit?”

She jumps. She’s on a laptop in the Arctic Edge office, and she’s looking through the comments of a public figure skating forum. She isn’t fast enough to close the site before he comes up behind her. She wonders how long he’s been standing there, watching her read through the replies on a post about if she and Scott will survive their first Olympic journey.

She clicks exit. “Is our break over?” she questions instead of replying.

“No, I was just wondering where you went.”

She’s hit with an unusual lack of appreciation for his unwavering awareness of her existence. “Okay.” She sits on the couch, silent for a moment.

He sighs, then says, “It’s all bullshit, you know.”

She wonders how long he’s known about it, about the things that people say about her, about the nasty ways that they scrutinize her body as if she isn’t aware of the things they’re saying. Scott likes to pretend he’s clueless, sometimes, to get out of the hard conversations. This time, it seems, he has decided to speak up.

She licks her lip. Once, twice. Then clears her throat. “Yes, I know.”

Scott shakes his head. _Not good enough_ , her mind echoes. She corrects it, remembering the exercises her therapist ran her through. _He needs more from your reply than that_. “No, I don’t think you do know. All the stuff they’re saying… they don’t know a single fucking thing. Not about us, but _especially_ not about you.”

 _I think they’re a little less biased than you are, Scott._ Her unconscious is a demon that she has to fight every time it chimes in, because it usually knows nothing about the reality of things. That’s something she’s been learning. She sighs, sagging against the sofa, and then admits: “I know it all in theory. Applying it, and believing it, is the hard part.”

Scott sits beside her, so close to her on the couch that one of his legs lie on top of hers. He takes her hand in his. “Is there anything I can do to help?” he asks. His voice is as soft as the cushioning language he uses to speak to her every time he wants to discuss Important Things, but she appreciates it, vanishes in it, relents for it.

She rests her head on his shoulder, and allows him to hold the weight of her. “I’ll let you know,” she whispers.

He squeezes her hand, and she feels the motion of it in her heart. “You promise?”

She gives him a nod, unable to speak. He kisses her hairline, lips dry but more comforting than she deserves. _No, that’s untrue_ , she disputes herself, and counts that as a win. They stay in that moment until Igor finds them moulding against each other on the couch, allowing their bodies to transform into one entity.

She’s trying, she thinks. When she stands, ready to return to practice, the ghost of Scott’s hand lingers in hers. It’s a start.

**Author's Note:**

> Find me on my [writing Tumblr](http://falsettodrop.tumblr.com), or for fandom posts (where I actually post about these two, and figure skating), on my [sideblog](http://viewsfromthestyx.tumblr.com).


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